Robin ran his hands over his stomach and chest. His whole body was bathed in sweat. He sniffed around—there was a pungent odor in the room. Old cat piss, he thought, brought to life out of his soiled rug by the terrific Tangier heat.
He stumbled to his sink, grabbed a towel, flopped back onto his bed, and mopped off. The heat was terrible, had closed Tangier in. He couldn't see Spain anymore from the roof of the Oriental, and the Rif mountains were lost in haze. All the rogue cats of the medina seemed to be in heat. At night their cries echoed in the alleyways, reminding him of sex and love and pain.
He'd been miserable for two weeks because of the heat, and bored too with the town. There'd been nothing, not a glimmer of a scandal, no material for his column at all. This was a recurring problem, and Robin knew what he had to do: stir up Tangier, force the city to act itself.
A picnic. He'd give a picnic and see what material developed out of that. He owed everybody anyway. A picnic would be a good, cheap way to pay them back.
He snatched up a pencil and began to make a list. Barclay, of course—he put down his name first. He didn't like Barclay but felt he had no choice—the man, for all his faults, would give his picnic cachet. But to make some trouble he listed Patrick Wax and Inigo, whom Barclay despised, then added Darryl Kranker because he was devious and sly, and Larry Luscombe, who'd been in a deep depression since his humiliation in May. He could have Joe Kelly too, he thought—that would annoy everybody, because Kelly was so awful and low—but he rejected that idea and crossed off Luscombe's name as well, afraid that when the others saw these two they'd make excuses and leave. He put down Bainbridge, so that Barclay would have an ally, and Sven Lundgren because the dentist was close to St. Carlton, and he wanted to be remembered when the couturier came to town. He thought a while longer, dabbing at his pencil with his tongue, then added the writer Vincent Doyle and Hervé Beaumont, who'd recently confided that he was thinking of turning queer.
The next thing was to draw the invitation—something Barclay and Wax couldn't resist. He set to work, revising to achieve the proper effect. When he was finished he read his draft aloud:
Robin Scott most cordially invites you to a picnic to celebrate the summer solstice. Date: June 21. Time: 1:00 P.M. Place: By the rocks near Robinson Plage. Bring a salad and a Moroccan "friend." Everything will be shared!
That, he decided, was irresistible. It was a stroke of genius to ask them to bring their bumboys. Before he went out to breakfast he scrounged up paper and envelopes and in an elaborate script wrote the invitations out.
He spent the morning delivering them, trudging up the Mountain in the heat. His last stop was Villa Chapultepec, where he also delivered a kilo of kif and persuaded Hervé Beaumont to loan him glasses, skewers, and a tent.
That evening Patrick Wax stopped by his table at the Centrale.
"All chickenhawks, Robin?"
"With chickens too."
Patrick was delighted and blew him a kiss. Kranker came by a few minutes later and said he'd be there with his latest, Nordeen.
Over the next few days the others accepted—everyone except Barclay, but that, Robin knew, was his game. Barclay liked to create anxiety by being unpredictable, accepting and then not showing up, or not accepting and then arriving by surprise. He was the only man in town who could get away with that—the fault of the rest of us, Robin thought. Still, as much as he disliked him he desperately needed him to come, so he rang him up determined to get him and quite prepared to kiss his ass.
"Are you coming to my picnic, Peter?" he asked in an appropriately humble voice.
"Who's going to be there, darling? I know it's rude, but—"
"Everyone, Peter."
"Everyone?"
"Friends and enemies. That's the fun."
"With Mustapha too, you mean?"
"Of course, Peter. Of course."
"I'll think about it, dear, but forgive me if I don't turn up. I get headaches on the beach."
Robin thought then that he'd hooked him, but just to make sure he threw him another bone. "I really hope you bring Mustapha, Peter. It's so amusing the way Wax turns envious when he sees that boy with you."
Peter muttered something and rang off. Robin felt he'd escaped with his dignity intact, and without the gouged scar that was Barclay's usual price.
He was thinking hard then about saving money on the food. He considered buying horsemeat for the kebabs, but he knew the Moroccan boys would recognize it no matter how much salt and cumin he packed on. He decided against it, since one of them would surely tell, and then his more fastidious guests would retch.
He only wished he could invite his real friends—Jean Tassigny, the Beaumont girls, the Hawkins', Vanessa Bolton, Martin Townes. But his picnic was strictly confined to queens. The Moroccan boys would be prancing around in their skimpy shorts, and he expected biting insults and nasty repartee from his European guests. A mean and nasty social life was indispensable to his profession—a flaw, he knew, in his hugely flawed character, part of the aura of corruption he was trying to cultivate about his name.
On the morning of the solstice Hervé Beaumont came by to pick him up. They stopped at a cheap butcher shop, picked up wine and bottled water, then drove out to Robinson's beach. It was such a searing day that they immediately took a swim, then worked to set up the tent. Robin was clumsy with the pegs and stakes, and finally, after everything collapsed, Hervé erected it himself. Robin lay in the sun for an hour in a pair of cutoff jeans. He knew his guests would be late, vying to make spectacular entrances, so he waited patiently and with a hopeful heart.
Percy Bainbridge was first. The Australian inventor brought an English boy, an ordinary tourist he'd picked up at a bar. This boy, he said, ran a poodle-clipping service in Liverpool, which fascinated Percy, who had the notion of turning dog's fleece into yarn. "That way, you see," he explained, "a master could have a sweater knitted from the hair of his very own dog. Think of it—master and dog in matching coats. It's just the sort of thing that could catch on."
Robin was irritated when Vincent Doyle arrived alone. The old exemplar, the literary lion, gaunt and bony, his hair shaved nearly to his skull, explained that his friend Achmed was indisposed. Doyle was excessively polite, but Robin sensed he was on edge. He settled on a rock and immediately lit up a pipe of kif.
Doyle always carried his manuscript with him, packed in a burlap sack. He was known for his paranoia, his fear of Moroccans, particularly servants and police, and his belief that a revolution might break out at any moment, making it necessary for him to leave the country without his work. Doyle was almost as well known as Ashton Codd, but he hadn't published anything in years. The manuscript he carried was to be his swan song, a huge novel into which he was pouring everything he knew and by which he hoped to remind the world that he was still alive.
Robin offered to store the sack in the tent, and actually had his hands on it when Doyle suddenly grabbed it back.
"Christ's sake, Vincent. What's the matter? This thing's as heavy as bricks."
Doyle, upset, stashed the sack beneath his knees. "I'm most particular about my manuscript," he said. "I'm a mother you see. I must keep my baby in my sight."
"Yes, of course." Robin nodded, though it saddened him that Doyle, once such a famous hipster, had become an old lady about his goods.
Sven Lundgren arrived next, with his Mohammed, thank God. Immediately they stripped to bikinis and ran hand in hand into the surf. Mohammed was delicate as a willow branch, his smooth, bronze flesh marred by adolescent pimples along his jaw. Robin was entranced, for he was truly a chicken, his innocence set off by contrast with the dentist, whose torso was covered with a pelt of thick blond hair.
Kranker arrived then with Nordeen, a sulky boy whom Robin knew from around the Socco. Kranker liked professional hustlers; he had no interest in finding and courting a lover, preferring to pay for sex and keep himself detached. This had its advantages, and dangers too, since most of the hustlers Robin had known were capable of exhibiting psychotic rage. Kranker, Robin thought, must be excited by the danger, the possibility of being suddenly turned upon with fists and knife. He lay down beside Doyle, leaving Nordeen to his own devices. The boy drifted down to the tidewater and began to build a castle in the sand.
So far the picnic was shaping up with a lot less style than Robin had hoped. Hervé was literally sulking in his tent, Lundgren was in the ocean, Bainbridge and the poodle clipper were lying in the sun, and Doyle and Kranker were whispering together by the rocks. But then suddenly and simultaneously Inigo and Patrick Wax appeared, and at the sight of them Robin knew everything would be all right.
Inigo, wearing nothing but a white panama hat and green silk slacks, walked across the sand with the panache of a South American millionaire, stalked by Pumpkin Pie bearing a great plate of salad, with Inigo's sketching kit strapped across his back.
Wax arrived from the opposite direction in a flowing white djellaba and gold-trimmed Arabian headdress, his riding crop in his hand. His Kalem followed, bearing salad and a folding beach chair—a marvelous, tough-looking Arab boy, Robin thought, with bulging muscles and a cruel face. This Kalem was only the latest in a long line of chickens whom Wax had ferreted out, instructed in interior decoration, introduced into society, then dropped when the youths became twenty years old.
"Oh, Patrick," Robin yelled. "You look just like T. E. Lawrence."
"Florence of Arabia, dear boy," Wax replied. "I see Mother Barclay hasn't arrived."
"She will," said Bainbridge.
"He'd better," said Wax. "I want to arrange a wrestling match between his Mustapha and my Kalem." Then, sotto voce: "I've been teaching this beauty the manly art of self-defense. He'll pin Barclay's chicken in the dirt."
Robin was elated. This was just the sort of thing he'd hoped to see. He helped Wax arrange himself, then hurried to Inigo on the other side.
"My salad and my friend," the artist said, snapping his fingers at Pumpkin Pie. "You must come see his portrait before I ship it off to New York."
Pumpkin Pie grinned.
"Oh, he's very pleased," said Inigo. "I've flattered him a lot. He's being good to me this week—I've promised to take him to Madrid. Well—first we're going to swim, and then we're going to draw."
"Come say hello—"
"No thanks, Robin. I detest homosexuals. Wait—isn't that my dentist in the sea?"
"If you're such a snob, Inigo, you can swim farther down the beach."
"Yes. That's what we'll do." He snapped his fingers at the boy. "Come!"
Pumpkin Pie handed Robin the salad and sketching pack and followed Inigo across the sand. A few minutes later, when Robin came out of the tent, Patrick Wax beckoned with his crop.
"Look," he said. "Do you see Doyle? Now why do you suppose he doesn't undress?"
"The sun's hot today—"
"Rubbish, Robin!" Wax switched him gently around the navel. "There're black-and-blue marks all over him. That Achmed of his beats him up, and of course the man's ashamed."
Now that was something Robin didn't know, and wasn't about to concede. Wax was a marvelous character but he lied all the time and was the most evil man in all Tangier. Though he lived in a palace on the Mountain, he kept a flat for assignations in town, a deteriorating place that Robin had once seen, filled with dusty, rusted mirrors and scores of crucifixes on the walls. The crucifixes, Wax claimed, were part of a valuable collection he'd inherited from his mentor, a Polish cardinal or a Bavarian bishop, depending on which version he was telling at the time. They had, he said, a twofold usage: as religious paraphernalia, and to ream boys in the ass.
Inigo came out of the sea, fetched his sketch pad, then went back to the sand to draw Kranker's Nordeen. Kranker watched with Doyle, a twisted smile on his face, which Pumpkin Pie tried to catch in a crude drawing of his own.
"You see," said Robin to Hervé , whom he'd finally enticed out of the tent, "all the boys are learning from their mentors. Wax is teaching Kalem interior decoration, and Inigo's teaching Pumpkin Pie how to draw. Doyle's got Achmed writing verse, and Barclay's Mustapha is learning how to entertain. We expatriates leave a magnificent heritage. Look at Farid Ouazzani, the Inspector's brother. Wax taught him about antiques, and now he has a shop on the Boulevard."
"Bazaar Marhaba—is that the place?" The poodle clipper had been listening in.
"Yes," said Robin. "Been in there?"
"Uh huh. The other day." He pulled off his T-shirt, exposing a pale, fragile chest. "The young man showed me everything, and then we went upstairs to look at rugs. As soon as we were alone he took my arm and asked if I felt like making love."
"Ha!" said Wax. "That's Farid!"
"Did you do it?"
"Certainly not. I didn't know him, and besides, I didn't come down here to catch a disease. I bought a little bracelet from him, though, so he wouldn't feel hurt." He flashed his wrist. "Sort of cute, don't you think?"
Robin was beginning to take a dislike to this nelly queen, who seemed so ordinary among his Tangier friends. He was about to say something nasty when Wax guffawed.
"Ho, ho! Look who's there. I believe Mother Barclay has arrived."
Barclay had managed to come last, but his entrance, Robin thought, was not the best. He and his Mustapha trudged across the sand, giving identical little waves of the hand. Barclay's hair showed silver in the sun, matching the handle of his cane.
"Hello. Hello. Hello, dear. Vincent. Percy. Robin. Hello."
Barclay waved especially vehemently toward the Moroccans, all helping Nordeen now with his castle in the sand. While Robin assisted him with his towels, Barclay gave instructions to his boy. "Mustapha, look there! What a lovely bit of sandcraft that is! Go on down there and play with the others. Show them how to build!"
When the boy was gone Barclay sat down a decent distance from Patrick Wax. "I feel just like a scout master," he said to Robin, then turned to peer at the sketch of Nordeen that Inigo was passing around.
"I'd like to own that," said Kranker.
"Oh," muttered Wax. "How I bet he would."
"It's yours," said Inigo. "But you must pay my price."
"Certainly," said Kranker. "How much would that be?"
"Oh—a thousand pounds."
Kranker scowled.
"I adore Inigo," whispered Wax. "He knows his worth."
"Yes," said the artist, sitting between him and Barclay. "I think that's an important thing. I'm looking forward to my forties—I see myself becoming very 'Rolls Royce.' "
Robin brought wine to Kranker, but Doyle declined, pointing to his pipe.
"I was just telling Darryl," he said, "I think your column is rather Proustian."
"That's very complimentary, Vincent—"
"Oh, I don't mean in quality. In its aggregate, you understand. One can follow all sorts of little stories through the years. If you'd just paste your columns together you'd have some kind of chronicle. Perhaps a book."
"I don't like that Inigo," said Kranker, still annoyed.
"He's very talented," said Robin. "Closest thing we have to a genius in Tangier."
"Genius! Don't be absurd. We have Doyle and our poet, Codd. Anyway, his paintings are too stylish. Too superficial and slick. If Picasso were alive I know precisely what he'd say. 'You draw very well, mon petit. But your paintings are only decoration.'"
"I think that's unfair."
"What's the point in being fair? He has a bloody nerve asking a thousand pounds for a sixty-second sketch of a five-dirhan street whore."
"Well," said Doyle, embarrassed by all this, "I think I'll take a walk."
He gathered up his manuscript sack and started down the beach. Robin and Kranker moved to join the others, now polarized into separate groups around Barclay and Wax.
"I'm devoted to the Sultan," Wax was saying to the poodle clipper. "And he, of course, is devoted to me—"
Barclay had brought out a pair of opera glasses, encased in mother of pearl, and was training them on the Moroccan boys. "You know," he said, "I think Pumpkin Pie just goosed my Mustapha. What the hell is the dentist doing down there?"
"I like Moroccan bodies," said Bainbridge, "but they have such gorillas' heads."
"I love their faces," said Inigo. "Their bodies strike me as Japanese." He got up then, asked Robin for more wine, and followed him into the tent. "Your friends are all so witty," he said. "I'm at a disadvantage. I'm a visual man."
"Nonsense, Inigo. Your English is very good."
"It's difficult. I'm always getting mixed up. In English, it seems, an asp in the grass is a snake. But a grasp in the ass is something called a goose."
Helve was pumping a bellows at the fire he'd built to grill the kebabs. Robin helped him, showed himself clumsy again, and retired when Hervé gave him a mocking look. Returning to the group before the tent, he nearly collided with Sven Lundgren, who'd left the Moroccan boys and had flopped down on the sand to everyone's barely concealed distaste.
"They're building such a castle down there," he said. "Tunnels, alleyways—you ought to see."
"Sounds like the Casbah."
"Yes," said Kranker. "Unconscious replication. It's in their blood. The little beasts are prisoners of the collective unconscious of their nasty, backward race."
"I wonder if it isn't time," said Barclay, "for our little chickens to come home to roost."
"Oh, let's leave them where they are," Robin said. "They're getting acquainted. We'll be eating soon. Anyone seen Doyle?"
"He took a long walk down the beach. I think I see him far away."
"In a minute he'll lie down and let the flies descend upon him. Then he'll count them. He does things like that."
"Strange man," said Robin. "And that sack of his is heavy. I tried to help him with it, but he wouldn't let me. It weighs a ton."
"I'll tell you something about that sack," said Kranker. "But you must all promise you won't tell anybody else."
They all nodded except for Robin, who made a practice of never agreeing when people asked him not to repeat confidential things.
"You too, Robin. I don't want to see this in your column."
"All right, damn it. Go ahead."
Kranker smiled, looked around. "He has a manuscript in there, you can be sure, but it's light and it's very thin. The weight you felt was his silverware. He hauls it around with him because he's afraid to leave it in his flat."
"My God," said Barclay. "The man must be cuckoo mad. How did you find that out?"
"Achmed told me. It's a game they play. Achmed tries to steal the silverware, and Doyle tries to keep it safe. A year or so ago Achmed got hold of some spoons which he immediately sold in the flea market. Doyle never said a word, pretended it didn't happen. That's their relationship. They play psychological chess."
"Is it true that Achmed beats him up?"
Kranker shook his head. "No. They torture each other mentally. That's the trouble with Vincent Doyle—he'd like to be a physical masochist but he has too low a threshold for pain."
Robin looked hard at Kranker, so gleefully attacking his friend. Never trust a writer, he thought. Sooner or later he'll sell you out.
When the kebabs were ready Robin called everyone to lunch. Doyle came back from his walk, and all the Moroccan boys returned from the sand. They sat in their bikinis in an inner circle chatting in Arabic about sports, while their benefactors lounged behind them on beach chairs speaking of the Tangier demimonde. Robin served the skewers and passed the salads. Fortunately Inigo and Wax had brought lavish ones, since Barclay had brought nothing except Mustapha, his towels, and himself.
"How's everything at the church these days, Peter? Your investigations getting anyplace?"
"We have our suspects." Barclay laughed. "We're narrowing down the field."
"None of us, I hope."
"Oh—maybe. You'll have to ask the Colonel about that."
"But surely you don't expect him to solve the thing?"
"Why not?" said Robin. "He's got nothing else to do."
"But really," said Wax. "Horticulturalist, genealogist, and now amateur sleuth. Old Lester is good at things like checking up on a story. If someone claims his uncle was an earl, old Lester will find him out. But he's no detective. He's too lazy and stupid for that."
"Don't underrate him," said Bainbridge. "He's got a passion to get to the bottom of this thing and I wager his stick-to-itiveness will out."
"You certainly have plenty of that yourself, Mother Bainbridge. By God, you've stuck to that grapefruit juicer of yours."
Everyone laughed a little, and Bainbridge wilted. Robin felt sorry for him. For years his inventions had been a joke, but recently people had begun to make fun of him to his face. Barclay, who pretended to be his friend, never came to his defense and scornfully called him "my lady-in-waiting" when talking about him behind his back.
Wax must have felt sorry for him too, for he immediately launched into an irrelevant story. Robin had heard it before, but Wax's gestures were so theatrical, and his voice so compelling, that he found himself falling under the old man's spell.
"Oh, about 1938 I met Bosie Douglas in Florence. He was old then, a ruin, but still a magnificent-looking man. I told him how awed I was to actually meet such a legend—how I'd read all about him as a boy. We became rather close, and of course I asked him about Oscar Wilde. He told me the most incredible thing—that he and Wilde had never screwed. I couldn't believe it, but he insisted. Wilde, he said, was after him for years, but Bosie always resisted him, and the most that ever happened was that occasionally he'd let old Oscar suck him off. This suggests a theory about the idea behind Dorian Gray—imbibing the life juices of a younger man in order to stay young oneself. Anyway, I said to him: 'If you weren't that way, Lord Douglas, why did you go around with Wilde all the time?' 'Simple,' he answered. 'Wilde was the most brilliant companion a man could have. And it annoyed my father, whom I loathed.' Fascinating! The funny thing about Bosie was that he was interested in girls—young ones too, twelve and thirteen years old. He'd follow them around Florence like a rake. I told him he'd better be careful about that, but he laughed me off. 'There's not a court in the world,' he said, 'that will ever believe that Bosie Douglas is a dyke!' "
In a way, Robin thought, it was a precious story, and he was annoyed when Barclay tried to eclipse it with one of his own. He told a boring anecdote about an English actor he'd once slept with who'd used his appendix scar as the centerpiece for a butterfly tattooed above his loins.
When he was finished Wax baited him by suggesting that Kalem and Mustapha fight.
"Won't allow it," Barclay said. "I know you sent your boy to karate school. I've been coaching Mustapha in something else."
"Oh? What's that?"
"To speak like an Eton boy. A hopeless cause, of course."
Inigo excused himself, gesturing for Pumpkin Pie to follow him into the sea. Doyle went off in another direction, Bainbridge and the poodle clipper went to sun themselves on the docks, and Lundgren and the Moroccan boys began to play soccer on the beach. This left Robin with Barclay, Kranker, and Wax, and a discussion of the "Mohammed problem" upon which they were all quite eloquent, he thought.
"Oh, they make us suffer," Barclay said. "They love to do that. Look at Inigo. The terrible things he has to take from that Pumpkin Pie. We teach them, introduce them around, show them how to use a knife and fork. And what do they do? Steal, chase after girls, and feel no gratitude for all the love we lavish so generously upon their wretched souls. They're in it for the money and the comfort. Certainly not the love. And we can do nothing to change them. We can only acquiesce."
"That," said Kranker, "is why I stick to the Socco. They're good for sex and nothing else. I wouldn't live with one if he paid me. I don't have time to suffer on their account."
"But it's marvelous to suffer," Wax put in. "Don't you think, Robin? Oh—but you're too poor! To really suffer you have to be rich like me, and offer them ways to become corrupt. Look at them over there." He pointed to the soccer game. "Look at them, preening around like little cock dandies. They're animals, that's all, and they don't care a hang about us. Except for what they can get—food, clothes, a warm bed. Thing to do is trick 'em. Make 'em think they'll be remembered in our wills. Kalem, like the rest of them, is in for a big surprise. I promise him things, tasty little objets d'art. 'This necklace will be yours someday, dear.' 'Someday you'll have my crucifixes, my furs, my robes.' Ha! He won't get a cent. I'm leaving everything to my sister in Sussex."
"Oh, come, Patrick," Robin said. "What you say is cruel—to corrupt them with all your stuff and then throw them back on the dungheap when you're done."
"Not cruel at all, my boy. The dungheap's precisely where they belong. It's good for them to be there. Builds their characters, you see. Anyway, they can study me, and when I'm done with them they can sink or swim on their bloody own. If they don't learn how to hustle from me, they certainly don't deserve to survive. Tangier's a cruel town, and I'm no exception. Let's face it—it's the boys who brought us here. And we pay a hell of a lot for that."
"One pays for everything," Barclay said.
"That's right. So why be sentimental? But you are, Peter. You have a nauseating sentimental streak. What's this I hear about Camilla Weltonwhist giving a birthday party for Mustapha?"
"She is, next week. Nice of her too."
"She's secretly in love with you, Barclay. It's her poor sad way of ingratiating herself."
Barclay shrugged. "Fine. Let her ingratiate. She's been a good deal more successful at it than you."
"Look at Sven there," said Wax, pretending he hadn't heard. "He's a terrible dentist. Probably the worst dentist in the world. Yet the poor idiot keeps at it, because he doesn't know how to hustle any other way. He's slept with St. Carlton on and off for years, and all he ever got out of it was a closet full of St. Carlton-designed ties."
"I don't get your point," Robin said.
"Well, I'm sorry about that, dear boy. Let me try to make it clear. My point is that the world's divided between those who hustle, those who squeeze the ripe fruit of life and suck out of it all the juices therein, and the rest of humanity, the poor working bastards who are hustled and squeezed to death. Now which is better—to be a squeezer or one of the squeezed? Do you see? That's the one thing I've learned in life, the one thing I have to pass on. You've been living in Tangier for ten years, you're getting a belly, and you're losing your looks. You live in a pigsty, sell dope, make shabby little deals, and write your delicious column. Well, what have you got to show for it? You should have done like me, latched onto a rich old man when you were eighteen or twenty, learned all his tricks, ingratiated yourself, gotten yourself into his will. Course you're redheaded, and redheads don't usually succeed.
"I was lucky. I found a prince. Not a temporal prince, mind you—a prince of the church. He was rich too, had vast inherited lands. We spent ten years together, and I got everything in the end. Most of it I lost in the war, but I'd learned to hustle and was able to make another pile on my own. How? Selling things, trading, hustling furniture and art. The point is that I had a métier. So here I am, in decadent Tangier, rich as Croesus, with a beautiful chicken who obeys me like a dog. I don't envy anyone. I wouldn't change places with blue-blooded Barclay here for anything in the world. I was born the son of a chimney sweep, but I squeezed the fruit of life and sucked out everything that was there. The trouble with you, Robin, is that you skip around too much. You've got good instincts, but you don't go for the kill."
"Thank you, Patrick," Robin solemnly replied. "I appreciate your analysis. Everything you say is true. Now I shall go into the tent and weep."
"Don't weep, boy," Wax called after him. "You're adorable. We love you, you know."
Robin turned, smiled, waved his hand, then retired to the tent to rest.
Inigo was the first to leave. There were still many hours left of light, and he wanted to go home and paint. Then Doyle left too, dragging his sack, to drive back with Kranker and Nordeen. Lundgren and his Mohammed hitched a ride with Wax and Kalem. Barclay took a dip, put his arm around Mustapha, and came to sit by Robin while he dried off.
"Now, Robin," he said, "we've had our differences. But I like you, so I must give you some good advice. Stay clear of Patrick Wax. He's a nasty piece of work."
"I think he's quite amusing, Peter—"
"Awful person. Phony. A thief. Everything out of his mouth is a lie. That absurd story about Bosie Douglas—and how he loves to say 'Lord Alfred Douglas'! I happen to know Bosie wasn't anywhere near Florence in thirty-eight. He was in London, sick with pneumonia. We were cousins, you see."
"Yes, yes, but what difference does it make? Everyone lies in Tangier."
"There are degrees, Robin. Degrees. People like Wax go in for homosexuality because of the social mobility involved. Wax would be a chimney sweep like his father if he hadn't gotten smart and become a pouf."
"What are you saying? That he's not a pouf? That it's nothing but an act?"
"You said it—not me. But it's true. He's false, from A to Zed. He became gay just to get in with his betters, and because it allowed him to enter circles where it was easier to steal. Beware of him, Robin. He really shouldn't have been here. This was to be a chickenhawk and bumboy party. He didn't belong!"
He left then, abruptly, and Robin looked after him amazed: Barclay condemning Patrick Wax for pretending to be a homosexual because he couldn't condemn him for pretending to be a lord. Wax made no bones about his background. He loved to tell people he was a chimney sweep's son and played the role of imposter to the hilt. Now Barclay accused him of being a heterosexual in disguise. It was the most absurd thing Robin had ever heard.
Bainbridge and the poodle clipper were the last to go, and Robin was not displeased. Percy said he was working on a new invention, something extraordinary, a "three-cornered kiss."
"It will revolutionize group sex, bring coherence to carnality," he said in his Australian whine. "It's not an invention so much as a technique. I won't be able to patent it, but I do hope people give me credit. I want them always to refer to it as 'the Bainbridge kiss.' "
When they were gone Robin put on his shirt, then lay out in the dying sun. Hervé was down by the sea washing the glasses and plates. Robin watched him, a silhouette against the Atlantic. The sea was smooth, a great expanse broken only by an oil tanker moving slowly out of the distance toward the Straits.
"Shall we take down the tent and drive back?" Hervé asked. He'd packed the skewers and glasses in a basket.
"I don't know," said Robin. "Why don't we sleep out here tonight?"
Hervé agreed, and so the two of them sat together on the sand waiting hours for the sun to set. Robin had taken in too much of it. He felt a fever rising to his forehead as if all the heat he'd absorbed in the afternoon was breaking out now in the cool of the dusk.
Later, feeling better, lying before the tent with Hervé Beaumont by his side, Robin remembered that this was the night of the summer solstice, the shortest night of the longest day of the year. In three months the autumnal equinox would come, then the winter solstice and circles more of changing seasons after that. As he pondered these cosmic matters, the antics of the afternoon began to take on a new perspective in his thoughts.
He felt let down by his picnic, bitter and angry too. He didn't know why, since everyone had been nasty as he'd hoped, and he'd heard some good stories, even picked up some tidbits for his column. Perhaps it was the predictability of the nastiness that bothered him, the way they'd all tattled on one another, the foul perfume of their gossip and lies. It seemed more pathetic than amusing that Vincent Doyle lugged around his silverware. There was pathos in Barclay trying to make an Eton boy out of Mustapha, and in Inigo, a great artist, suffering over Pumpkin Pie. Bainbridge and his absurd inventions. Lundgren, the incompetent dentist. Kranker, so filled with bitterness and spite. He even felt sorry for Wax and his pretensions, his "Florence of Arabia" act. They all seemed so absurd, cruel, self-deceiving fools mingling on the sand, specks on a speck in an indifferent universe, so flawed, so powerless in the face of the burning sun.
Should he leave Tangier? Would things be better for him somewhere else? He doubted it, and at the thought felt disgusted by his life. How pathetic he was, keeping so tight a grasp upon his column, like a clerk in a post office holding on to a tiny power.
Then he thought, how strange to lie here and feel metaphysical distress. He'd organized the picnic, orchestrated it for his amusement. It was just something he'd done to pass an empty afternoon.
But this day was the solstice, a mark on the calendar of life. How many more seasons, he wondered, how many more are there left for me to kill?